Otalgia
by ADyingGalaxy
Summary: Soulmate AU: Nebula hears music, always. And it's the same old songs, always; Or The Actual Weirdest Pairing That Makes No Sense AKA Peter/Nebula.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I don't know what I was thinking, but I hope you... enjoy?

* * *

Nebula never wins, but she's concluded that everyone expects it. Even Thanos – especially Thanos – perhaps that is the one thing going through her father's mind every time he extracts another piece of her mind, body, or soul and replaces it with metal and circuits. Perhaps that is what makes his grin speak of dark glee whenever she is bested; she is there for his amusement, to torture and maim and make into a shell of a warrior.

Her mind is not so singular, however. She's never been quite as focused as her father's or even her sister, her opponent for all intents and purposes, Gamora's.

Gamora always wins, and that should be enough – so says Thanos – to spur Nebula onward and let bloodthirst and ambition take control. He doesn't understand, however. He can't when Gamora's throwing Nebula over cliff-sides and onto crushing beams that bend Nebula's spine into irregular shape and punching her hard enough to shatter Nebula's ribs.

He doesn't understand Nebula's determination to connect with Gamora outweighs her determination to make Thanos proud. To be as broken as he enjoys making her day after day.

He doesn't understand how Nebula ponders the meaning of Gamora's questions, when they are sleeping beneath artificial stars in their separated cots. Or how Gamora is inherently kind, giving her leftover rations to Nebula to 'help her bulk up' and offering her hand to help Nebula up, no matter how many times Nebula forces herself to reject that hand. Nebula has hope inside, still, somewhere, that if she could have anything at all, it would be mutuality from the one constant in Nebula's life that doesn't destroy her just for fun.

It is easy to love Gamora. It is easy, and that is what makes it that much more difficult to fight her.

That, and the music that is almost always droning in her mind.

* * *

"Why are you always daydreaming?"

It is one of those nights where neither Nebula nor Gamora can properly sleep. They are both waiting and ready and anxious for tomorrow's mission, and as she stares at the faux night sky above their "room", Nebula tries her best to not be cynical. She is sure, deep down, that she will not defeat Gamora tomorrow – or ever, but she defies what is surely Thanos's logic.

It is already difficult to think when she can hear music coming from all sides of the room. Quiet, but constant noise, like a blaring alarm that isn't genuinely that unpleasant.

"I do not dream." Nebula replies.

"Yes, you do." Gamora insists, turning in her bed to look at Nebula from across their quarters. "When we fight, you are never entirely there. Today, you looked like you were going to cry before I even hit you."

Nebula looks back, and glares in the dark. It was undeniable that during training, she had reacted much slower than she would have normally, and normal was still too slow compared to Gamora. The thoughts in Nebula's mind, no matter what they were, coincided with the music that clouded all else, and with a sense of dread that wasn't entirely her own.

She had not been feeling her best that day, it was true, but Nebula had no real explanation as to why. She cannot, in the end, find words enough to challenge Gamora's thinking

Her mind fills up the uneven silence instead.

 _'I'm not in love_

 _So don't forget it_

 _It's just a silly phase I'm goin' through'_

* * *

They've invaded many moons and planets in search of what Thanos has called "the ultimate pieces" of some grand puzzle that he does not elaborate on. Ever.

Nebula would not think to ask, but Gamora may have. She seems more confident on their raids, more specific in how she examines for whatever it is they're searching for.

It isn't surprising in the least, even if it still sends a spike of jealousy and of hurt into Nebula's chest.

They crash into a brothel and send everything from tacky decorum to loosely-bolted limbs of comfort bots flying in their wake. Nebula is the first to give up, certain that such a location for divine weaponry could not be this one whorehouse.

The sounds of Gamora smashing a wide-glass wall onto two frightened individuals, one made of metal and the other in red rags, fades as Nebula hears the beginnings of a song in her mind.

Not again. She whispers inside her own head, to some entity that exists outside of her now enhanced sensory faculties. It's futile to try and tune out those songs, ones that have been imprinted so thoroughly in her brain – organic or cybernetic – that she wonders if this has all been an elaborate technique of torture from Thanos.

She doesn't officially know the names of the songs that play, but she knows this one and she knows that this is one of her least favorites.

Nebula returns to searching to try and focus on some other thing, but she isn't appeased by blue and green blood coating her fists so much as she is intrigued when she finds a speaker in one of the brothel's halls. The music from that speaker filters into her ears, and Nebula concentrates enough to successfully deter the other song from finishing.

They leave the moon of whores and mongrels, empty-handed. Gamora is beyond frustrated, but Nebula is silent as Un Deye Gon Hayd permeates her own little world.

* * *

When Gamora is gone – gone for good – Nebula feels true anguish and rage course through her mangled body.

She could have endured Gamora's detached wins a thousand times over for a thousand more years, but to be left behind without anything more – it's enough to join forces with a zealous fanatic and destroy an entire, militant planet against Thanos's wishes.

* * *

The songs in her mind are often lighter now than they had been before, in the amorphous past between being young and being ripped apart. She is 'free' of Thanos, but not free of her new purpose – vengeance.

The planets and moons that she rips apart now may lead her to a new weapon made perfectly down to the last golden detail.

And maybe, if she finds her sister out there and kills her, the contrast between her pain and bright, happy music playing every day will no longer be worth pondering.

* * *

She hears the sounds growing louder and louder – but it isn't the battle on Planet Ego that she's hearing – it's the constant refrain and accursed melody that she remembers from childhood better than she would her original body that she'd been born with. It deafens the destruction around them until all she can sense are an array of instruments and the visage of Peter Quill coming toward her, with words like 'batteries' and 'tape' dying from his mouth amid the din and fray.

 _'To the spirit in the sky_

 _That's where you're gonna go when you die_

 _When you die and they lay you to rest_

 _You're gonna go to the place that's the best'_

Peter stops in front of her, and his expression is comical.

"Do you hear…?" He talks with his hands, gesturing at thin air. "Is it loud to you?"

"All is." Nebula answers flatly while the ground shakes and rumbles – while her stomach turns. "My hearing is far superior to yours."

"No, I mean, do you hear music?" Peter exclaims, practically shouting. He's not afraid to stand right in front of her, and acknowledge her like she isn't a daughter of Thanos, but an actual person.

This is the man with whom Gamora joined forces to stop Ronan. And he is an idiot. A now fully-mortal and reckless and annoying idiot that would die a thousand times over for his friends' behalves.

This is her soulmate.

Of course, even her soulmate would prefer Gamora – would prefer to team up with her and become a family with her – over Nebula herself.

* * *

No one is happy with the epiphany. But there's no time to further explain it when they prepare Yondu's funeral.

Peter Quill is so distraught and devastated that his musical mind is silent all throughout the ravager captain's eulogy, and Nebula is just as silent – although she'd never been that inclined to go looking for a song to fill their minds with in the first place. It doesn't last long however. Peter has some new musical device and plays it so that the sound dwarfs the explosion of fireworks outside of their shell of a ship. A thought comes unbidden into her cacophonic mind as she prepares a shuttle to make her getaway. She knows, now, that Peter always sought music for comfort.

Nebula is poised to leave. To fight Thanos and – she is willing to accept it – to die trying.

Still, Gamora takes her defensive posture and throws it to the wayside. She envelops her sister in her arms and embraces Nebula for what is truly the first time. Gamora calls Nebula her sister, and means it.

Nebula's lips twitch into something like a smile.

She stays, but the idea of being a garden – Guardian of the galaxy leaves a bad taste in her mouth. As does walking around without a purpose in their humdrum Quadrant, around the talking fox and the moronic bore of a destroyer, and around the painfully adorable sapling and the insect woman, and her sister. So, Nebula finds a silent corner of the ship to seek refuge in.

Until a song begins playing. And the song is Peter himself, come to stand near her alcove and shift from foot to foot with his musical device clutched in his sweaty palm.

"I want… I mean..." Peter says, trying to sound confident even when there's that audible ache in his tone. "I know you don't care about what I want, but… I wanna get to know you."

"There is nothing about me that you need to get to know." Nebula states. "You have been told all there is, by my sister no doubt."

"Well, sure, I guess." Peter scratches the back of his head, eyes creasing as he stares at the tectonic floor below them. "I mean, you hear my music all the time, so… I could make the argument that there's nothing else about me that you need to know, either."

She stares at him shrewdly, looking fierce perhaps, as Thanos had wanted her to, from Peter's nervous expression. She looks him up and down just… because. There was never any precedent or anticipation when it came to finding her soulmate, not for Nebula. She wonders if Peter felt the same way, if his upbringing drove those thoughts away too.

There was only ever the faint constant of music droning in her mind.

"I don't care for the Pina Colada song." Nebula looks away, then her head swings in his direction, but she falls just shy of meeting his gaze. "It is terrible. Their relationship was built on nothing."

When she does gather enough curiosity to combat her own apathy, Nebula's dark eyes focus on the face of Peter Quill while he's sitting beside her. He's smiling, happily, almost childlike because she deigned to share her opinion on one of the songs in his arsenal – even if that opinion is negative.

"Yeah, I figured that out a while back too." He laughs quietly, goofily, while sweeping a hand through his undulating reddish hair.

Nebula can hear something playing faintly then, and instantly recognizes the chorus of 'I'm Not In Love' repeating like a broken record inside of herself. She doesn't know if the song is coming from Quill or if it's because of her, but looking at him now she dreads how her vision lingers on his soft smile and how whatever's left of her that is organic relaxes beneath the gaze of those laughing green eyes.

"We should find one you like better." Peter says, somewhere in the distance, behind the soothing synth and strings that is no doubt playing in both of their heads.

It is easy to love Peter. It is easy, and that is what makes it that much more difficult to not tap your foot to the beat.


	2. Please, Please

_A/N: I will freely admit that nothing happens in this spinoff, but I've been particularly fond of Nebula lately and wanted to add to this._

* * *

Those songs…

Either Peter Quill favored some of the saddest, most depressing songs in his new Zune (which he should've been exploring far more than he was) or…

Nebula physically shook her head at the thought. She had left the company of the guardians on a solo mission, intending to get information on Thanos and his ultimate puzzle, which Gamora had surprisingly little information about other than that Thanos had been looking for the Stones long before he'd adopted them.

Nebula's sister had known trivial historical facts that had been shared with her by Thanos and by the Collector as well, but while the lessons had provided some scope, they weren't useful in obtaining a better in with regards to murdering the space tyrant.

The lack of information made Nebula's blood boil in frustration.

' _If you ever change your mind_

 _About leaving, leaving me behind_

 _Oh, oh, bring it to me'_

She could scour the galaxy if she so chose, turn up every stone and tear apart every well-organized bureaucracy like Nova to get her way, somehow. She could orbit around Thanos's trail day and night, night and day, and on and on and on, for as long as her tank was full and there were burning stars that lived and died out there.

* * *

Nebula returned to the guardians' ship after calling in. The stupid fox and his talking sprout had been the ones to answer, but the snark of the rodent-like beast wasn't enough to deter her expected reentry into the quadrant. She would return, as she'd stipulated, in half a day, as the Hraxian system where her new home was close to only eight jumps from the Ulgrit system that she'd stationed in.

The call center that she'd chosen to make a long-distance communication attempt in was acceptable, if gritty and littered with loitering slobs and drunks. Ulgrit V was a small moon where a hive of scum and villainy spun around the larger Ulgrit I.

Nebula could practically see Quill's childish grin at her using that phrase, even if only in her mind. It was difficult to keep the moron out of her mind, when his songs fell in sync with the dial of the holocom.

' _Good time for a change_

 _See, the luck I've had_

 _Can make a good man_

 _Turn bad'_

"Where is Gamora?" Nebula asked brusquely, narrowed eyes dead-center on the fox, whose teeth were permanently bared and whose fur was always fluffed and full of static where she was concerned.

"She and Quill 'r off with the big guy on a stealth mission." Rocket told her, after begrudgingly opening his mouth at the bequest of the sprout and the bug, whom Nebula could not see in the holo-image. It occurred to the former Daughter of Thanos that this was the one and only time that Rocket had been so tight-lipped.

"I see." Nebula's gaze dropped to the straw-covered floor for a minute too long. "Expect me in 0012 hours."

The fox scoffed, but Nebula hung up _first_ with a sneer.

* * *

Gamora offered her a hug when she'd docked into the Third Quadrant. Opening her arms and letting her palms, which had held an array of knives to kill with and a hundred throats to crush, fall lax with fingers stretched out in Nebula's direction.

The green-skinned assassin was the only one to greet Nebula, but that was to be expected, and Nebula briefly embraced her sister with hovering hands. Gamora was better at these things, was better at holding you and better at expressing her happiness at your return with just her warm, brown eyes.

Nebula flinched when her brain filled up with a new song that she'd never, ever heard before.

' _And it's magic, if the music is groovy_

 _It makes you feel happy like an old-time movie'_

"Ugh, Peter." Gamora muttered, both exasperated and fond as she looked away from Nebula to the upper level where the deck and their team were sat. It took a moment, but Nebula realized that it wasn't only her that heard the new song. The first happy-sounding melody in two long months now reverberated against the titanium walls of the entire ship.

* * *

She was greeted kindly, by Kraglin and Mantis and Drax at least. Peter spun from the pilot's chair to give her a Look that relaxed her and made her insides turn all at the same time. He's somewhat like Gamora, with that stupid goofy smile and those eyes that light up brighter than the hull lights, but he came lumbering over to say hello where Gamora would have stood her distance.

If she could trust her own eyes, Nebula might've believed that Peter's were somewhat misty while he gazed at her from down that imaginary cloud filled with moonwalking and lightsabers that hung around his head.

"Welcome back!" He rumbled, and without thinking about how they were in a semi-public setting with all their friends surrounding them, Peter took her hand and brought it up to his chest. Nebula felt him squeeze her hand gently, as light as the touch of a butterfly against one's synthetic skin.

* * *

The music in her mind was manageable again. She found herself grateful that before his death, the Ravager captain had left his surrogate son a keepsake with more than eight songs, and that not all of them were distractingly sad.

But now she questioned the greeting she'd received from the more musical of their bond when welcomed back onboard.

Gamora's affectionate beckoning and understanding looks were starting to become familiar to her sister, but with Peter it was different. The rest of their team weren't touchy-feely in general, although the tattooed lummox didn't have a problem with boundaries that much, and the Empath bug drew attention with her capabilities infused into her fingertips.

But with Peter it was different.

Nebula had had conversations with the Terran imbecile since their mutual discovery on Planet Ego, in which she'd always been cutting and had come rolling with a barbed tongue and Peter had dodged her clumsy remarks like an old racehorse on a beaten track.

He'd remained an easygoing and yielding river, ebbing and flowing over the rough terrain of her granite self and terrible interactions until he'd created grooves so deep that she couldn't dream of electric sheep without him telling her another story about his planet that she'd have to be an idiot to believe was true. In nooks and empty corners, where trace lighting made his copper hair shine and his green eyes gleam with laughter, she found herself easing into his company and into his culture of deafening oneself with song and dance.

Nebula sat alone at their shared table, while the bug and the twig lay on the ground at her feet drawing pictures, and stared at the hand that Peter Quill had taken.

Still, she'd come back from her solo stint to learn that Peter's hair and stubble had grown, and that he had never touched her before.

* * *

Nebula skulked with feline-like stealth, around the ramparts and the docked Milano as well as their escape pods and her personalized loner ship. She'd been pacing long enough within a certain vicinity to where she'd been present for six song rotations – this time from the bridge, where Peter had apparently let the fox choose what they listened to for the day. The music kept coming like a reprieve for all the years when Nebula couldn't escape Quill's Awesome Mix Vol. 1.

And she couldn't get one blip-on-the-radar song out of her head regardless. The chorus played in her head long after she was sick of it, but then it must have been annoying Quill as well.

When she finally decided to join the rest of the team, she found them sat around the table together sans the fox. The Destroyer was regaling their crew with a story for a change, but Nebula zeroed in on Peter with his arm slung around Gamora's shoulder. He swung Nebula's sister and himself from side to side gaily, a look of relaxation and joy on his gristlier face.

Sans the fox, sans her.

The luphomoid wondered with a downward glance if Thanos had been right in never favoring her over Gamora.

* * *

Peter was telling Nebula about receiving a call from Nova Prime, about being asked to become recruits for an on-planet ceremonial. He was relaxed and yet animated, but Nebula interrupted what felt like a companionable pause in his story, ignoring the tempo of her racing heart at being all alone with the man for what was the first time in forever.

She ruined their moment like a metaphorical fist through a glass display.

"Do you love my sister?" Nebula asked, in a voice full of ice, which was not her original intent.

"Yeah." Peter replied without hesitation, though he looked perturbed. "I love all our friends."

 _Our friends,_ Nebula nearly shuddered. She hadn't thought of the rest of these… mismatched people as hers, though they were certainly Peter's, and certainly Gamora's. But now Quill was calling them _our friends_.

Peter studied her and was halfway to raising his arms out to her, then folding them, and then he decided to sweep his hair back and let his warm hand, larger than Nebula's, rest at the back of his neck in a more characteristic display of nervousness.

He searched for the right words, a faint and dismissive smile on his haggard-looking face. "Nebula, you…"

' _You know I'll always be your slave_

 _'Till I'm buried, buried in my grave'_

"This doesn't have to mean anything if you don't want it to." He said quietly, defying the song that filled their conjoint silence, or maybe addressing it to prove his point, or both.

* * *

The newest and most begrudging guardian had meant to maintain her resolve. She'd thought and thought at a distance, with the memories that had begun building when she let herself stick around for more than a few weeks at a time.

Peter was not hanging on Gamora's shoulders, or grabbing her arms to try and pull her over and see something. He was beginning to keep a careful distance away from her at all times, and it was muddling the normal atmosphere of the guardians' ship so much that the rest of their friends had the same uncomfortable expressions as Gamora and Peter.

It carried over into the ceremonial that they all ditched partway, and into the night when Gamora would sit with Nebula and show her how to shine her swords or how to braid hair. Gamora was too distracted and hurt for Nebula to stand.

Nebula's facial muscles twisted into a grimace at the change in behavior for the last time and she grit her teeth, before she cornered Peter after he'd returned from a bar on Knowhere, only slightly tipsy.

"You are making my sister uncomfortable." Nebula accused, fists balled up.

"Nebula." Peter slurred at the sight of her, eyes crinkling. "There you are!"

She batted his hand away, unable to discern why he was making a fist, pointing two fingers, or laying his hand flat over hers. "Return to being as insufferable as you were before our last conversation."

"Stop hurting Gamora." Nebula ordered, dark eyes locked on his own.

"I didn't mean to hurt her, or you." Peter assured back, but he frowned. "I thought you didn't like me being friendly with her, because you thought..."

"I take it back. I was wrong. Just stop." She retorted. End of discussion.

Peter started anyway. "Hey! Thwarted by a silly misunderstanding! This is just like on Cheers –!"

The modified woman caught his hand in her own, and was still dwarfed by her partner – her soulmate. And she pulled him to her without a word.

He was cut off, words muffled by the fabric of the Ravager rags that Nebula had kept and decided to wear, as she wrapped her arms around his neck. Nebula could've been wrong, but she'd been stunned the first time Gamora had ever hugged her. She understood that the gesture took some getting used to.

' _So, for once in my life_

 _Let me get what I want_

 _Lord knows, it would be the first time'_

"This is a hug. I am embracing you." She clarified for his sake. Her organic heart thumped when Peter got over his bewilderment to pull her in tightly and she felt his crushing limbs warm her inner circuitry.

"Really?" He knew what it was, of course. And yet Nebula could feel his smile against her half-metallic, half-organic flesh and the cloth covering it. "Think we should do this more often…?"

"Really?" She smirked.

Their leader was silent for the longest time, until he dipped forward and let his cheek rest against her shoulder. "I missed you."

' _Lord knows, it would be the first time'_


End file.
